Winners from the January 14 Republican Debate

Ted Cruz: Transcended his “obnoxious Ivy League snob” persona to blossom onstage as more of a “grating Princeton-and-Harvard-educated pedant”

Donald Trump: Just you watch, his poll numbers are gonna climb after all that

John Kasich: Despite still being John Kasich, continued to hold his spot on the main stage

Roberto Firmino: Scored two lovely goals for Liverpool against Arsenal on Wednesday evening, making a far better case for himself than anybody on the GOP stage could muster

Chris Christie: Correctly said onstage that his record as governor of New Jersey speaks for itself; luckily for him, it’s clear his record as governor has been totally overlooked by the rest of the country

Rand Paul: Finally had a free evening to sit down and really sink his teeth into Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

Writers of snarky social-media posts humorously riffing on the presidential debates: At this rate, we’ll have choice material all the way till November 8

LOSERS:

Donald Trump: Mentioning his name again just because that’s the best way to get people to click on your political #content

Ben Carson: Seems to open every debate with that “I was wondering when you were going to call on me” line. It’s almost like he’s trying to paper over a total lack of substance with an increasingly stretched and insufficient veneer of personality or something

Jeb Bush: Will likely soon have to replace the exclamation point in “Jeb!” with an em dash or asterisk

Marco Rubio: Christie’s resurgence puts him in serious danger of losing his podium spot among the loudest candidates in the field

The Democratic Party: Real talk, is anybody else worried that the party’s choice to have so few debates, and at times which guarantee low viewership, is allowing the Republicans to set the tone for the election cycle by allowing them to espouse, relatively unopposed, their message of Democratic failure and duplicity to a large audience, normalizing the notion as a reality of this election cycle, and through its constant repetition potentially causing a large number of voters to unconsciously internalize this message as a fundamental truth of American politics?

The World: David Bowie, Alan Rickman, and a Republican debate, all in just five days? There is no God